Posts Tagged ‘What I Ate Wednesday’

Happy second day of 2013! I know everyone says this at the beginning of every year, but I can’t believe that when I write “2013” that’s actually the current year. But this year I really can’t believe it. I’ve spent so much of the last year planning and laying the ground work for things I want to do in 2013 that I can’t believe it’s finally here. It’s both exciting and terrifying.

I haven’t done one of these What I Ate Wednesday posts in a while. Since I eat so many of the same foods (overnight oats for breakfast, granola bar for a morning snack, piece of chocolate after lunch, fruit as an afternoon snack, fruit after dinner, and a small piece of dessert after dinner) every single day (which I love) I think posting a full-day of eats is boring. Which is why I’m posting the recipes I’ve made this week.

First up How Sweet Eats’ Super Easy Creamy Tomato and Chicken Baked Penne. I am really enjoying this. It was super easy to make and has a great flavor. I will say I wish I had cut the chicken into smaller pieces. And it is kind of watery, I left the mixture simmering in the skillet for a minute or two in hopes of thickening it up, but no luck. That said, it still tastes good and it reheated fairly well.

Next up is Nutritionella’s BBQ Black Bean & Brown Rice Burgers. These are seriously amazing. Hands down my favorite bean burger I’ve ever made. I put my burger on a Trader Joe’s bun (I love their buns and they’re only about 110 calories each) and topped it with spinach, cheddar cheese, onion, ketchup, and jalapenos. Really delicious. For lunch today I’m having the burger on top of a salad and hopefully that will be equally delicious.

Finally is The Pioneer Woman’s Zannie’s Black-Eyed Pea Dip. Last year I made Hoppin’ John, my first ever black-eyed pea recipe. I thought I’d keep the black-eyed pea tradition alive this year, but go for something a little different. This dip was good, but not really what I wanted it to be. I thought it was kind of more heat than taste and it was also very dry. I think I might have overcooked it and put it in too big of a pan, but still, I wasn’t too impressed.

The picture on the left is me and my friend Laura the night of the 2008 election and the one on the right is us last night. It’s pretty great to look at that picture and see how much we’ve changed/haven’t changed (apparently we’re getting old as our vision is much worse!). And personally I think I look great now compared to 2008.

Now on to the important things, what I’ve been eating. Here’s the summary of the last two weeks since I didn’t do last week with the mess of Hurricane Sandy.

We had meetings at work for three full days right before Sandy. On Thursday they served us lunch and this is a small chicken Caesar wrap and chicken noodle soup, plus fruit and a few sweet potato chips. I threw out most of the soup, it was very fatty and not very good.

Breakfast for one of the meetings, a mini chocolate croissant and some grapes.

Bag of candy corn that I snacked on for a week. A bag is the perfect amount.

Apple cider sorbet from Blue Marble. It was odd, I don’t know if I’d get it again, but it wasn’t bad at all.

A new bagel place opened on my neighborhood a few months ago, I resisted going for a while since it looked pretty yuppie, but it turns on their bagels are amazing. I usually pick one up on a weekend day. The bagels are a little sour and so crispy on the outside and the veggie cream cheese has so many veggies. I seriously love this place.

Hot mint tea while the hurricane was raging outside.

Mama Pea’s Monkey Scramble (minus the bread, I love carbs, but even that’s a little much for me), my perennial favorite breakfast.

Daily Garnish’s Yogurt While Cheddar Cornbread, probably my favorite cornbread. And, here’s a hint, if you forget to add the milk it just comes out slightly dry…

Broccoli grilled cheese and roasted potatoes, such a delicious lunch.

This was my dinner all last week. It’s Eat Live Run’s Beef Chili (but with ground turkey). I went to so many grocery stores looking for Bush’s chili beans, but I had no luck. Maybe they’re not an east coast (or at least NYC) thing? I bought these weird Goya beans that I thought might be similar, but they freaked me out so I decided to look for a chili bean recipe. First, do you know how hard it is to Google chili beans and not just get chili recipes? Somehow, I don’t know how, I found a recipe. And it was amazing. I used my food scale to measure 48oz (the equivalent of 3-16oz cans). I liked this chili recipe, it was a lot of work since I made my own beans and I do think it would have been better with ground beef, but I don’t think I’d make it again. There are a lot of other really great chili recipes out there.

Pinky mimosa while out for Thai food Halloween night.

Halloween candy a little girl gave me on the street. I thought she was asking me if I had candy as I walked by, but then she told me she was offering me candy. Which was very nice of her. I was allowed to take two.

Eat Live Run turkey chili. I love this chili, probably the best turkey chili I’ve ever had. The wine really gives it a nice depth and the spiciness is perfect. I’ve been looking forward to eating this for dinner all week.

Cheese Enchiladas with Red Chile Sauce. I like this, but there’s also something weird about it. The serving size is fairly small, there’s a lot of cheese and not that much beans. and mine is so much thinner than the picture. But it tastes good and warms up well in the microwave so it’s not a bad lunch.

Here’s a roundup of all the interesting/different/boring food I ate this week.

There was a party at work Wednesday night (I wasn’t invited, thank god), but I did get to take advantage of the leftover food. I had a pulled pork sandwich and potato chips (I ended up not eating the chicken wings, I took a bite of one and it was too rubbery). So good, so filling.

Apple cider doughnut from the Greenmarket courtesy of our IT director. What is better in the fall?

I don’t think I’ve ever shared a picture of the feta and herb scones I am obsessed with from Bread Alone. I try to limit myself to one per week, but sometimes I’m bad and have two 🙂

We had a little Octoberfest celebration at work for the second year in a row. Sam Adams Octoberfest beer reminds me so much of college. It was the first “real” beer I ever drank (not Bud Lite or the crap we’d have in high school). It brings me right back to my first year of college.

This is a really terrible picture, I know, of the hard cider I had at a wine bar Friday night. I ordered it because their wines were all really expensive. The bartender poured a little for me to try and I thought it was very odd, but I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. So I tried more and decided I really liked it. It was super vinegary, but still good. I could only have one glass though.

This is the roasted eggplant soup I’m eating for lunch this week. I like it, but I don’t love it. I would prefer it a little thicker. And there’s a certain flavor I don’t love, I added a teaspoon of cumin and a teaspoon or coriander. But it’s a good lunch, I like the suggestion someone made in the comments of adding tahini instead of cream, I might make it again and try that. And I’d probably add more garlic, no such thing as too much roasted garlic.

I had this for a treat on Sunday night while watching Homeland. It’s supposed to be a rainbow cookie, but it was kind of blah. I got it from Trois Pommes, where I’ve gotten good and bad things before. It needed more almond paste and to be more moist, it was very dry.

A co-worker made this caramel cake (I’m pretty sure it’s from this cookbook) and brought it in on Monday. It was amazing. I highly recommend it.

Finally, the lasagna soup I made for dinners this week. I didn’t remember to snap a picture of it, and the leftovers are already frozen, but I really enjoyed it. I ended up using fat-free ricotta, but if I made it again I would use the full-fat. Also, I didn’t put mozzarella on top, that made it too high in calories, but next time I might not do the parmesan/ricotta mix and just do the mozzarella instead. Really, anything with Trader Joe’s spicy Italian chicken sausage is delicious.

I wanted to post this yesterday, but then I realized I needed a picture of the pasta I’ve been eating for dinner, so let’s just pretend it’s Wednesday. Here’s my recap of what I’ve made this week.

This Friday night dinner was a serious favorite. I needed to pull something together from what I had at home. I had two little chicken breasts leftover from something so I breaded those with an egg I added some hot sauce to and panko bread crumbs. Then I pan fried them (just a little Kerrygold butter) and then topped them with blue cheese and more hot sauce (leftover from the buffalo chicken chili). Like a healthier boneless wing. Plus some steamed broccoli and roasted blue potatoes.

Next, crockpot falafel. These are before they were cooked. These were, unfortunately, not a winner. The recipe said it was fine to overlap them, but it wasn’t. Any part touching another falafel didn’t cool. And they did not get even remotely crispy. They taste fine, but the texture is so terrible I don’t think I’ll find them.

When I felt so sick on Monday I couldn’t bring myself to eat falafel. So I went and bought these Stacy’s pita chips. I had never tried the garden veggie medley ones and they are GOOD! I’ve had way too many of those with hummus over the last few days.

Finally, lightened up creamy cajun chicken pasta. I ended up using 8oz. of pasta rather than 6oz. so I made four servings. I thought a pound of chicken between three servings seemed like a lot. I didn’t increase the sauce at all so it wasn’t really saucy, but I still really liked it. This is definitely a winner.

As you know I went to Austin last week and, as always, I ate some pretty damn good food.

First up, lunch at the Magnolia Cafe. I had been here in January, but for breakfast. I was very excited to go back for lunch. When I first got this voodoo chicken sandwich I was not impressed. It just looked so bare and boring, but holy hell looks are deceiving. This thing was damn good. The chicken was cooked perfectly and the spices were wonderful. The tomato on top was so juicy and even the bun was great. I would order this again in a heartbeat. And the potatoes were pretty damn great too.

For dinner that night I wanted to stick close to my hotel, which was in north Austin so I went to Z’Tejas Grill. It’s apparently a chain, but I had never been. After reading the reviews on Yelp I knew to ask for the cornbread, which was amazing. I had some with dinner and then saved the rest to eat for breakfast in the morning. For my entree I had the Diablo Pasta which was: Red pepper and green spinach linguine with a spicy sauce topped with Cotija cheese and fresh jalapeños. I got it with shrimp. The only changes I would have made: less cheese and instead of cutting the jalepenos like that I would have cut them into smaller bites s othey were easier to eat. Otherwise it was amazing. I also had a real Dr. Pepper (smaller size and with cane sugar), I had never had one, but I keep hearing about them and I figured, when in Texas. The only problem was that you needed a bottle opener to open it, which I didn’t have. So I tried the old college trick of banging it against things. I tried the counter in the bathroom but I chipped a piece off (oops) and finally settled on the plastic garbage can.

I tried to order room service for breakfast, but they ignored all my calls. As I mentioned I had some of the cornbread, but then headed to Great Harvest and got a smoothie. It was ok, it kind of hand a funny taste.

For lunch I did some searching on Yelp. I didn’t want to go too far from my hotel, but I also didn’t want to go to a chain. Finally I found the Taco Deli which had amazing reviews. Unfortunately I was not a fan. The place was packed so it obviously has a following, but I didn’t get it. At all. I got the salsa verde with chips, the salsa was good, but it had such a strange consistency. It was almost sticky? I don’t even know how to describe it. It was like it had corn starch in it maybe? I would dip a chip into it and then it would leave a little trail, almost like cheese does, if that makes sense. For the tacos I had the Frontera Fundido Sirloin, El Conquistador, and The Heather. Honestly, I didn’t like any of them. The steak one was way too dry, the heather didn’t have much taste, and el conquistador was just bland. They were all pretty bland. And the corn tortillas were awful, they had such an odd consistency and no taste. Eventually I just ate one of the corn tortillas with each taco and that helped somewhat, but still, I wouldn’t go back here. I can think of at least five better authentic taco places in NYC.

For an afternoon snack I went to Amy’s Ice Cream which had a store right next to my hotel. I got one of their suggested mash ups which was Mexican vanilla ice cream with chocolate cake and Nutter Butters. It was amazing. The first time I went to Amy’s I didn’t like it, but I went back in January and I’m happy I did.

For dinner I picked up food from Zoe’s Kitchen which was right next to my hotel. Another chain, but it was pretty good. I had the turkey stack sandwich: whole turkey breast, mozzarella, feta spread, lettuce, tomato, sourdough, rosemary oil. The rosmary oil was really flavorful, as was the feta spread. I got the potatoes on the side. While I liked the sandwich, the potatoes, which were cold, were kind of tasteless. I tried added some salt but it didn’t help. I also had the limeade, which was very good.

At the conference I had two vodka sodas with a splash of cranberry, very good!

And all I managed get a picture of from my breakfast was this banana. I also had a bagel and muffin. Breakfast options at the Austin airport are pretty limited.

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I'm a 27 year old who lives in NYC and works in publishing. After struggling with health and fitness for years, I feel I've finally found a way to live my life to its fullest. Read about my adventures in NYC and everywhere else, with a focus on trying to eat healthy and exercise.

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